Regardless of their recent results, Team Liquid are the EPICENTER 2016 champions and will have the chance to defend their title at the beginning of June when the second edition of the event will take place.
Team Liquid had a marvelous year prior to The International 2016. They started off strong with a second place finish at the Shanghai Major and continued to be the main contenders for most of the next tournament titles. They finished on the second place at ESL One Manila as well as the Major Manila but most importantly they won the first edition of EPICENTER Moscow. Back then, Team Liquid’s roster was a bit different from how we know it nowadays. Considering the success they had before TI6, Liquid went to Seattle as clear favorites, but a disappointing 7th/8th place finish lead to changes in their line-up in the following shuffle.
Adrian 'FATA-' Trinks, Liquid’s mid laner, left the team to take an indefinite break from competitive Dota 2 and the support star Jesse 'JerAx' Vainikka moved to OG at the end of August 2016. Despite signing the two times Major Champion Amer 'Miracle-' Al-Barkawi and despite finding a new incredibly high skilled support in Maroun 'GH' Merhej, Team Liquid struggled to adapt to the new patches that came after last year’s International. It was in late September when they secured their first tile in the new formula, and for many Dota 2 fans it didn’t feel like a major victory. Securing the championship title of DreamLeague Season 6, a tournament that witnessed a lot of big names choosing to withdraw during the group stage, felt like an easy win for the Liquid fans.
However, the European juggernaut shut down any doubts regarding their form at the beginning of this year by winning the SL i-League StarSeries. Their amazing performance in China was acknowledged by Valve who granted them a direct invite at the Kiev Major. Unfortunately, Team Liquid were far from a good run in Kiev and after a shaky group stage, they got eliminated in the second round of the main event bracket.
Hopefully, EPICENTER Moscow 2017 will mark a new trail of good events for Team Liquid. The event boasts a whopping $500,000 prize pool and most probably will have a big impact on Valve’s decision for TI7 invites. Ten teams will fight for a slice of the generous prize. Six of them will be direct invitees, while four more will join the battle from Moscow via regional qualifiers. As of yet, OG, Evil Geniuses, Virtus Pro and now, Team Liquid have been granted a direct invite by the organizers. The regional qualifiers are scheduled to kick off tomorrow, May 6th, but no list of participating teams has been made public yet.
